Arduino vs. Netduino vs. Raspberry Pi vs. Beaglebone Black (Part 4)

BeagleBone Black

BeagleBone Black

The BeagleBone Black (BBB) is based on a 1Ghz TI Sitara XAM3359AZCZ100 Cortex A8 ARM processor. Similar to the Raspberry Pi, the BeagleBone Black includes: HDMI output, Ethernet, and it runs a version of Linux. The default distribution is Angstrom Linux. You can find other BeagleBone Black compatible distributions here. The BBB excels at I/O it supports: 65 GPIOs, 3 I2C buses, a CAN bus, an SPI bus, 5 serial ports, 8 PWM outputs, and 7 analog inputs. The BBB also supports expansion boards, called “capes”. However, Not all capes are compatible with the BeagleBone Black so be sure to check compatibility ( http://www.elinux.org/BeagleBone_Black_Capes ). One unique feature of the BeagleBone Black is built in support for the Javascript node.js BoneScript library.

Summary

The Arduino and the AVR microcontrollers are best for low cost, hard real time, low power, standalone applications, such as wearable electronics, driving LEDs, and simple control applications.

The Netduino and NETMF systems are best at networked complex soft real time control applications. The NETMF microcontrollers are particularly strong if you are interfacing to other Microsoft technologies, such as DWPS or WCF web services.

If your project is graphics intensive the Raspberry Pi is the clear winner. The RPi running Raspbian Linux also makes a great low end development platform.

The BeagleBone Black has the most capable hardware. If you are pushing the limits of performance or available I/Os the BBB could provide the extra capacity you need.